ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea of ‘total translation’ – that the art of translating drama does not end with the text, but extends to every aspect of the production: casting, design, costumes, light, sound, audience. Creating an imagistic reception of August Strindberg’s world was a significant aspect of total translation. The Dance of Death I in some senses looks back to the pre-Inferno plays, but the second play belongs firmly in the world of Strindberg’s post-Inferno writing. He was a multidisciplinary artist: besides his plays, he also wrote poems, novels and tracts; he painted and sculpted; legendarily, he was an alchemist and an amateur scientist. He is writing dreams and fantasy, in which the momentary belief in something is far more important than the empirical proof of its existence. Beneath the Howard Brenton adaptation, beneath even the literal translation, one could sense the Strindberg original asserting itself.
